Media watchdog to spend €3m on consultants to provide expertise on holding tech firms to account

The European Digital Services Act and the Irish Online Safety Code fall under Coimisiún na Meán’s remit.

Ireland’s media regulator is set to spend up to €3m on external consultants to provide expertise on the legislation it is tasked with using to hold big tech firms to account.

Coimisiún na Méan has gone out to tender on the expert consultancy services, which will require internal training for more than 70 staff, and the creation of “playbooks” to “codify engagement best practices”.

It comes as the media regulator is already assisting the European Commission in its investigation into X over the Grok undressing scandal, and has launched its own probes into X, TikTok and LinkedIn.

“[We may require services to] develop templates and playbooks for the supervision and investigations teams,” it said. “[And] provide expert advice to implement, supervise and enforce the regulatory framework.” 

A range of responsibilities fall under Coimisiún na Meán’s remit when it comes to regulating the online and broadcasting worlds. Chief among them are the European Digital Services Act and the Irish Online Safety Code.

Under these laws, fines for breaches can stretch into the hundreds of millions — such as the €120m fine dished out by Europe to X late last year — and since Ireland plays host to many of the major tech giants in Europe, it means companies such as Google, Meta and X fall under its remit.

As part of the consultancy services, it said “specific tasks may include” improving the information sharing process with EU institutions, other media regulators and stakeholders, developing processes for controlling frameworks for illegal content and harm and benchmarking on practices such as age assurance and parental controls online.

Its work has come into sharp focus in recent weeks, given the ongoing fallout from the situation where X’s Grok artificial intelligence tool was allowing users to alter photos of real people to put them in bikinis, less clothing and sexually suggestive positions.

Last week, its executive chair Jeremy Godfrey told an Oireachtas committee the Government should consider banning AI systems that can produce intimate imagery of real people without their consent, from ever being deployed in the first place.

“In the three years since our establishment, we have begun to see changes to make the online world safer,” he said. “However, the changes have not yet been sufficient and new types of harm — especially harms related to AI have emerged.” 

The consultancy spend comes as Coimisiún na Meán is already spending heavily on its legal bills as platforms seek to challenge its investigations in court.

In January, its first annual report showed it had spent €5.8m between legal advice and legal costs in 2024, the first full year of its operation. A further €1.6m was spent between March 2023 and the end of the year.

Excluding legal advice, it spent about €775,000 on consultancy fees in 2024.